Have Chris Brown and Rihanna really reconciled, less than three weeks after he was arrested on charges of beating her?
Reports in celebrity magazines People and Us Weekly suggest that the R&B stars are back together again despite all the negative publicity over the nasty end to their evening out on the eve of the Grammys in February.
Los Angeles prosecutors are taking their time deciding whether to file formal charges against Brown while police investigate who leaked the picture last week of a bruised Rihanna.
Should the couple have reunited so fast? And what will happen to the criminal case against Brown if Rihanna has decided to take him back and decides not to testify against him.?
President Barack Obama came precariously close to having a "bring 'em on" moment Saturday.
Back in 2003, when U.S. forces were struggling to establish order in Iraq, President George W. Bush was roundly pilloried when he taunted militants plotting attacks on American troops to "bring 'em on."
Obama, trying to push his first budget through Congress, is not feuding with Iraqi militants -- he's got his own axis of evil.
They are the powerful lobbyists and wealthy special interests who drive up healthcare costs, sponge off federal education loan money and soak up other government subsidies and tax breaks.
Obama says they are spoiling for a showdown over his plan to squeeze their funding out of his $3.55 trillion budget.
"I know they're gearing up for a fight as we speak," Obama said in his radio address.
Team Obama accomplished Saturday what the president's beloved Chicago Bulls basketball team was unable to do the night before: win.
President Barack Obama played basketball in the morning at the newly renovated Interior Department court with friends and staff, including Chicago pal Marty Nesbitt, press aide Ben Finkenbinder and Reggie Love, who serves as Obama's personal assistant and Saturday also carried the basketball.
White House officials declined to comment on details of the outing.
"The president enjoys playing basketball when possible. This was a private game with friends and some staff," one administration official said.
One of the players on Obama's team, however, said the president's side had won the game.
The president left the White House wearing track pants, a black jacket, running shoes and his White Sox baseball cap for the five-block motorcade to the Interior Department.
The game was played on the department's newly renovated basketball court, one of the original amenities of the 72-year-old building. The court was recently renovated and its massive skylight was uncovered and restored during the work.
Friday night the president took in the Chicago Bulls-Washington Wizards basketball game played at the Verizon Center sitting courtside opposite the Wizards bench.
Blog Guy, we've all read a about how thin those haute couture models are. How do they keep themselves that way? Why aren't they hungry?
Because they think they're eating whatever they want.
Excuse me? How does that work?
Look at the photo below, taken backstage during Milan Fashion Week a couple of days ago. Those models are deciding what to order from the "Cheesy-Greasy Fry and Pie Pig-Out Model Menu."
I don't see anything printed on there.
You're not a model. But those women see crispy warm deep-fried onion rings, double-rich cheesecake, pastrami sandwiches... No wonder they look excited.
But wait! What makes them hallucinate like that?
That's not for me to say, but the fresh surgical bandages on their skulls are a clue.
Models pose for a photo backstage before the start of the Blugirl Fall/Winter 2009/10 women's collection during Milan Fashion Week February 26, 2009. REUTERS/ Alessandro Garofalo
Juergen Klinsmann, who has turned German soccer upside down the last four years with a dynamic and modern approach to the game, has once again managed to silence the domestic naysayers, at least for the time being.
Bayern's 5-0 thrashing of Sporting Lisbon put an abrupt halt to the media speculation that Klinsmann's job was on the line after Bayern lost three of their first four Bundesliga matches since the start of the second half of the season in January.
Never mind that Bayern opened 2009 with an awesome performance in destroying VfB Stuttgart 5-1 in a German Cup match, those losses (in which Bayern played well) combined with one truly dreadful effort last week, a 2-1 defeat at home against Cologne, suddenly had the poets in the press box writing Klinsmann's obituary.
They were some of the very same short-sighted scribes who were calling for Klinsmann's head three months before the World Cup in 2006 after Germany lost a friendly to Italy 4-1. Germany were unbeaten in their next nine matches and made it to the semi-finals of the World Cup before losing to Italy (again!) in extra-time.
After a spell back in California, his first job as a head coach in club football got off to a somewhat rough start, as several internationals coming back from Euro 2008 struggled to get fit, but by the end of 2008 Bayern were back dominating German football. It's amazing that after just one poor match against Cologne some are writing Klinsmann off again.
Ulli Hoeness, the Bayern sporting director, made it clear on Thursday after Bayern's victory in Lisbon that the media got it all wrong. "There was never any discussion about Juergen Klinsmann at Bayern Munich. There was only a media discussion."
Certainly Klinsmann may rub many in Germany the wrong way. He's an optimist in a country that can feel like its full of pessimists, he's always trying new ideas and his affinity for offensive-minded football is fraught with risk. But let's face it: Bayern are fun to watch this year and on a good night, like against Sporting, they can probably beat anyone in Europe. Give Klinsmann two years' time and see what happens.
PHOTO: Bayern Munich's Italian striker Luca Toni celebrates after scoring his team's fifth goal against Sporting during their Champions League match in Lisbon, Feb 25, 2009. REUTERS/Nacho Doce
James Dobson may be stepping down as chairman of Focus on the Family, the conservative Christian advocacy group he founded over three decades ago, but that hardly means he's going into retirement.
Dobson, a leading figure in the U.S. "Religious Right," will continue his regular radio broadcasts which reach millions and will still write his monthly newsletter which is sent out to 1.6 million people, Focus on the Family said in a statement on Friday.
Dobson, 72, has built Focus into an evangelical empire in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and for decades he has been one of the leading voices in the U.S. conservative Christian movement, which remains a key base (some would say now the only base) for the Republican Party.
Dobson himself has long claimed that politics is a distant interest to his main "focus," which is defending the "traditional family" unit and old-fashioned Christian values. But in the past, few endorsements meant more to Republican candidates for high office.
And he has spent much time in the trenches of America's "culture wars" with his unstinting opposition to abortion and gay rights.
Dobson stepped down as president of Focus six years ago. The affable Jim Daly assumed those reigns two years later in 2005 and has since been seen as the "heir apparent."
Daly will not be stepping into the board chairmanship but analysts say Dobson's move signals a desire to allow the younger man more room to build his public image.
"Dobson wants to give Daly a chance to raise his profile ahead of the 2012 election ... he needs a public persona and it takes years to develop that," said Michael Lindsay, a political scientist at Rice University in Houston and a leading expert on the U.S. evangelical movement.
Dobson will still dispense advice on family and other matters to millions of mostly evangelical Americans as well as to a global audience. But it is another sign that the "Old Guard" of the Religious Right is slowly making way for the next generation.
Edward Echwalu sent in a series of pictures on a fire in a market place in Kampala, Uganda, this week and managed to send a complete package ensuring he had all the views necessary to illustrate the story.
First he had the overview.
Then he had the scene setter, complete with smoke rising from the ashes.
Then he had the drama of police firing tear gas.
And finally he sent in a powerful portrait of a youth holding a charred soda bottle.
In the narration of the "China Demands Relics Return" web video your reporter erroneously identifies the relics in question being looted in 1960 when it was actually 1860, during the second opium war.
Abraham R.
Yes, we redid the narration to correct that: GBU Editor
The yen's fall against the dollar the past few weeks has been remarkably fast, and calculated from where it is now around 97.70 yen, the dollar has jumped nearly 9 percent this month, on track for its biggest such gain since August 1995.
The yen surged last year as the worsening financial crisis forced investors to unwind risky carry trades - meaning they had to buy lots of yen - under the belief that Japan's economy and banks were holding up through the storm.
Only last month, the yen hit an over-13-year high of 87.10 per dollar. So why has the Japanese currency fallen so fast?
Analysts tell me one reason is some traders and investors who thought it would continue to rise, perhaps as far as 80 or even 70 yen, got out of such bets.
One catalyst was data showing the sharpest economic contraction in 35 years in the last quarter.
The bleak data seems to have further soured overseas investors' views on Japanese stocks. Foreigners have been been net sellers for 12 straight weeks to the tune of 2.97 trillion yen, around $30.4 billion.
When GDP data was released last week, they sold $4.6 billion in shares, the most in three months.
So how far could the yen retreat?
After looking at technical charts, Masashi Hashimoto, senior analyst for Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ, warns the dollar seems headed toward the psychologically key 100 yen level and is unlikely to stop there, with a rise perhaps as far as 105 in the next few months.
To be sure, the U.S. and euro zone have their own problems, so there are doubts.
The yen's fall could be limited by last-minute fund repatriation by Japanese investors and firms before the end of the financial year in March.
But Kimihiko Tomita, head of foreign exchange at State Street Global Markets here, says the tumble could pick up steam if longer-term investors keep shedding long yen positions, who have only just started such selling.
If that happens, all bets on a yen bottom are off.
A U.S. anti-coal campaign has gone Hollywood with a new TV spot directed by Academy Award-winning filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen of "No Country for Old Men" and "Fargo" fame.
The Reality Coalition, a project backed by environmental groups Alliance for Climate Protection, Sierra Club, National Wildlife Federation, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and the League of Conservation Voters, launched the ad this week.
Entitled "Air Freshener," it features a product pitchman entering a family's home with a spray can labeled "Clean Coal" that spews black, cough-inducing fumes.
"Is regular clean, clean enough for your family? Not when you can have Clean Coal
clean," he says.
The ad, designed and produced by ad agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky, is designed as a response to a series of coal industry-backed television spots and other ads promoting "clean coal," or technology to capture and store the global warming emissions from coal-fired power plants. Environmentalists argue that the industry's ads are misleading because clean coal does not exist yet on a commercial scale. The industry, however, says coal is an abundant and cheap resource that the U.S. cannot do without.
Despite U.S. President Barack Obama's green leanings, however, he has been a supporter of research into clean coal technology. Earlier this week, his budget proposal included $15 billion for technologies, including clean coal, that keep carbon out of the atmosphere.
Check it out the Coen brothers' ad below. It is the first of a series directed by the famous duo.
charges of beating her?
